Lighthouses

Bug Light

Not too long ago I promised myself I would avoid photographing lighthouses because everyone does that. Galleries in Portland, Maine’s Old Port district are loaded with paintings and photographs of lighthouses. When cruise ships tie up in Portland Harbor, local artisans set up their tables along Commercial Street selling all sorts of things, but what do you see the most of? Lighthouses. There are ceramic lighthouses, trivets with lighthouses, coffee cups with lighthouses, as well as paintings and photographs of lighthouses. Cruise ship passengers from around the world walk by and scoop them up.

Bug Light

Now, however, I have dozens of lighthouse photos, hundreds maybe. Our South Portland, Maine house is five minutes from two of them and ten minutes from two more. Because I always have a camera with me and all four lighthouses are situated in places I visit often — beautiful public parks or on state-owned land by the sea — I’ve become captivated by the lighthouse mystique. Maybe it’s their simple, functional design. Maybe it’s because they’re safety beacons situated in places of both great natural beauty and also great danger. Whatever it is, I’ll likely be taking hundreds more images of them before I’m dead.

Bug Light

The Portland Breakwater Lighthouse, otherwise known as “Bug Light,” is five minutes away. Every morning before breakfast I jog past the lighthouse in Bug Light Park and my camera is always in my car parked two hundred feet from it. Sometimes the rising sun shines so beautifully upon it that I cannot resist snapping a picture, or two, or three. I can put the Portland skyline in the background or use the islands in Casco Bay as backdrops, including the solid-granite, Civil-War-era Fort Gorges that still sits across the shipping lane a few hundred yards offshore.

Spring Point Light

My wife and I will often go for a stroll around Bug Light Park after dinner in spring, summer, and fall. As all photographers know, the best shooting light is just after sunrise or just before sunset — at which time we sometimes see stunning cloud formations behind Bug Light. The sun sets over the City of Portland across the harbor and I’ve taken dozens of shots with the Portland skyline in the background. The late film director Jonathan Demme called it “the golden hour."

Portland Head Light

Bug Light is unique among lighthouses in that its design was inspired by the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates which was built next to the Athenian Acropolis in 335 BC. It’s a classic design often copied around the world, especially during America’s Greek Revival period in the mid-19th century when the lighthouse was built. It’s the smallest of all Maine lighthouses, and classically beautiful.

Portland Head Light

Within sight of Bug Light, and also a five-minute drive away, is Spring Point Ledge Light on the SMCC campus (Southern Maine Community College). I often go there first to watch the sunrise. From Spring Point Light one can see both Bug Light and Portland Head Light at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth. On mornings with particularly good light, I’ll visit all three before going home for breakfast. At that early hour, I have them all to myself.

Portland Head Light

Portland Head Light was commissioned by the US Government and completed in 1791 while George Washington was president, and after the federal government took over control of all US lighthouses. The United States at that time stretched only from Maine (part of Massachusetts then) to Georgia and almost the entire population lived between the Appalachians and the Atlantic.

Ram Island Light

From Portland Head Light one can see Ram Island Ledge Light across the shipping channel. It was completed in 1905 after several shipwrecks on that dangerous ledge, but then all lighthouses were constructed following maritime mishaps. Also visible from Portland Head Light are two more lighthouses to the south at a location appropriately called “Two Lights” in Cape Elizabeth. Those were first built in 1828. While I’ve taken no pictures of “Two Lights,” I have many of the rocky shore at the nearby “Two Lights State Park” which I try to visit every week.

Spring Point Light

Portland Head Light is perhaps the most photographed lighthouse in America according to Smithsonian Magazine. According to oyster.com, it’s one of the top ten most iconic lighthouses in the entire world. That means that my photos have lots of competition, but I have the advantage of close proximity during every season of the year. Being semi-retired, I also have the time.

Portland Head Light

Four lighthouse pictures hang in our South Portland house and two hang in Lovell, so far. There may be more. One winter lighthouse shot hangs in a local hospital and I wouldn’t be surprised if they should pick a few more when their budget allows.

Framing Creation

Smarts Hill

It bothers me some that I’ve become attached to an inanimate object: my new camera. Realizing I had left it at our Lovell house and had to do without it a few days, I became mildly depressed. We were heading to Connecticut for my nephew’s wedding and I had to take along my backup camera, a Nikon D7100, which I leave in our South Portland house for just such an emergency. Only last April it had been my main camera and constant companion and my older D60 was the backup. When the new D850 finally arrived after months of waiting, I was infatuated and the D7100 felt like an old girlfriend.

Ram Island Light

The older camera had rendered me thousands of great images over five years. It was always within reach, and with its 24.1 megapixel capability I could enlarge images with little blurring if I didn’t crop them too much. Colors were good, automatic focus worked well, and I have several lenses for it. When Nikon introduced the D850 last September — a full-frame DSLR for half the price of Nikon’s flagship D5, and with equivalent capabilities, I had to have it. It’s biggest advantage is that it shoots at a remarkable 45 megapixels. It’s also very fast, has great dynamic range, and enormous versatility in low light.

There are drawbacks though. Because it’s a full-frame camera, I can’t use my older Nikon DX lenses. Well, I could actually, but they would diminish the D850’s capabilities so what would be the point? I had to invest in a new 28-300 millimeter FX zoom lens for another $1000. However, 28 millimeters isn’t quite wide enough for many shots I want to get. I miss the wide-angle function on the 18-270 I used for nearly ten years with my two earlier cameras.

Diving Loon

My very first camera was a red plastic box I got for Christmas around 1960. It used 620 film and flashbulbs. I can still remember how they smelled after going off — a scent I’ll never detect again I don’t think flashbulbs are manufactured anymore. I shot off several rolls but they sat in a kitchen cabinet for a long time before being developed, because I didn’t have the money. Processing was expensive. There wasn’t much I could do to frame a shot with that old box, either. I could walk around my subject. I could get up high or down low, but those were the only options.

In the late sixties I worked after school in the camera department of an old King’s Department Store in Tewksbury, Massachusetts where a Demoulas Supermarket now exists. When it wasn’t too busy I would take a 35 mm Minolta SRT-101 out of the display case and admire its workmanship. It was a top-of-the-line camera in those days but at $199.99 it was way out of my reach. For our first Christmas in 1971 however, my wife, Roseann, gifted me with one. That was forty-six years ago and I still have it. Although I haven’t shot with it for perhaps fifteen years and may never again, I do take it out once in a while just to admire its fine tolerances.

In the 5th verse in the Gospel of John he says: “God is light.” The late psychiatrist Scott Peck said once: “Sometimes I think God really IS light,” and I believe he was correct. That’s not all God is of course, but He does illuminate His creation. Without light we see nothing. Some say a camera is a tool for capturing light, but I see it as a way of capturing the play of light on the things He willed into existence, including my loved ones and the world in which we live. Everywhere I go, I’m thinking of how to frame some portion of what I’m seeing around me through a lens. My imagined frame might be a few inches across, a few feet, a few yards, or several miles.

Bug Light

That manner of seeing is especially acute just before and after sunrise, then again just before and after sunset. If there are clouds or mist to filter and reflect light at those times, I feel like I’m in heaven. Living on the side of a west-facing hill in Lovell gives me more opportunities at twilight, especially after a summer thunderstorm. In South Portland, there are several places within a five or ten-minute drive where I can watch the sun before and after it clears the Atlantic horizon before breakfast.

Other mornings I’m at Kezar Lake in Lovell when it’s mirror-like and misty. While checking the properties I care for and it’s not unusual for loons to surface only a few yards from where I’m standing. Perhaps they sense the veneration lake dwellers hold for them because they’re unafraid as I snap frame after frame.

Perhaps I’m so attached to that camera because it encourages me to notice beauty all around me I might otherwise miss.